Earth Rights Institute

Economists’ Quotes

Many economists, across the political spectrum, have urged the use of land value capture for public benefit (site rental or land value taxation) as a means to derive public monies rather than taxes on capital and labour. The following is a collection of quotes from some of the greatest economists who have advocated this approach.

Henry George Adam Smith David Hume John Stuart Mill The Physiocrats Karl Marx John Kenneth Galbraith Paul Samuelson Milton Friedman Herbert Simon James Tobin James Buchanan	William Vickrey Michael Hudson Herman E. Daly James Robertson John Maynard Keynes Philip Snowden Joseph Stiglitz Nicolaus Tideman Fred Foldvary Arthur P. Becker Harry Gunnison Brown
Economists’Letter to Michail Gorbachev

Henry George (1839 – 1897)

American political economist and the most influential proponent of the public capture of land rent for public benefit combined with the elimination of taxes on labor and production. He was the author of Progress and Poverty, written in 1879, Social Problems, Protection or Free Trade, The Land Question, Our Land and Land Policy, and The Science of Political Economy.

George formulated a comprehensive set of economic policies. He was highly critical of restrictive patents. He also advocated the replacement of patents with government supported incentives for invention and scientific investigation and dismantling of monopolies when possible – and taxation or regulation of natural monopolies. Overall, he advocated a combination of free markets and significant social programs made possible by economically efficient taxes on land rent and monopolies.

What has destroyed every previous civilization has been the tendency to the unequal distribution of wealth and power.

Almshouses and prisons are as surely the marks of `material progress' as are costly dwellings, rich warehouses, and magnificent churches.

It is not enough that men should vote; it is not enough that they be theoretically equal before the law. They must have liberty to avail themselves of the opportunities and means of life. They must stand on equal terms with reference to the bounty of nature.

The equal right of all men and women to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air. It is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men and women have a right to be in this world and others do not.

Our primary social adjustment is a denial of justice. In allowing one man to own the land on which and from which other men must live, we have made them his bondsmen in a degree which increases as material progress goes on. This is the subtle alchemy that in ways they do not realize is extracting from the masses in every civilized country the fruits of their weary toil; that is instituting a harder and more hopeless slavery in place of that which has been destroyed; that is bringing political despotism out of political freedom, and must soon transmute democratic institutions into anarchy.

Do what we may, we can accomplish nothing real and lasting until we secure to all the first of those equal and inalienable rights with which.... man is endowed by his creator - the equal and inalienable right to the use and benefit of natural opportunities.

For justice to be done between men it is not necessary for the State to take the land; it is only necessary to take its rent

Social reform is not to be secured by noise and shouting, by complaints and denunciations, by the formation of parties, or the making of revolutions; but by the awakening of thought and the progress of ideas. Until there be correct thought there cannot be right action; and when there is correct thought, right action will follow."

The wrong that produces inequality; the wrong that in the midst of abundance tortures men with want or harries them with the fear of want; that stunts them physically, degrades them intellectually, and distorts them morally, is what alone prevents harmonious social development.

If you would realize what land is, think of what men would be without land. If there were no land, where would be the people? Land is not merely a place to graze cows or sheep upon, to raise corn or raise cabbage. It is the indispensable element necessary to the life of every human being. We are all land animals; our very bodies come from the land, and to the land they return again.

To abolish these taxes would be to lift the whole enormous weight of taxation from productive industry. The needle of the seamstress and the great manufactory; the cart-horse and the locomotive; the fishing boat and the steamship; the farmer's plow and the merchant's stock, would be alike untaxed. All would be free to make or to save, to buy or to sell, unfined by taxes, un-annoyed by the tax-gatherer. Instead of saying to the producer, as it does now, "The more you add to the general wealth the more shall you be taxed!" the state would say to the producer, Be as industrious, as thrifty, as enterprising as you choose, you shall have your full reward! You shall not be fined for making two blades of grass grow where one grew before; you shall not be taxed for adding to the aggregate wealth.

...the value of land is at the beginning of society nothing, but as society develops by the increase of population and the advance of the arts, it becomes greater and greater. In every civilized country, even the newest, the value of the land taken as a whole is sufficient to bear the entire expenses of government. In the better developed countries it is much more than sufficient. Hence it will not be enough merely to place all taxes upon the value of land. It will be necessary, where rent exceeds the present governmental revenues, commensurately to increase the amount demanded in taxation, and to continue this increase as society progresses and rent advances.

The way to secure equality is plain. It is not by dividing the land. It is by calling upon those who are allowed possession of pieces of land giving special advantage to pay to the whole community, the rest of the people, and including themselves, to the whole people, a fair rent or premium for that privilege as using the fund so obtained for the benefit of the people. What we would do would be to make the whole people the general landlord, to have whatever rent is paid for the use of the land, to go, not into the pockets of individual landlords, but into the treasury of the community, where it could be used for the common benefit.

This truth involves both a menace and a promise. It shows that the evils arising from the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth, which are becoming more and more apparent as modern civilization goes on, are not incidents of progress, but tendencies which must bring progress to a halt; that they will not cure themselves, but, on the contrary, must, unless their cause is removed, grow greater and greater, until they sweep us back into barbarism by the road every previous civilization has trod.

It is not enough that men should vote; it is not enough that they be theoretically equal before the law. They must have liberty to avail themselves of the opportunities and means of life; They must stand on equal terms with reference to the bounty of nature.

Social reform is not to be secured by noise and shouting, by complaints and denunciations, by the formation of parties, or the making of revolutions; but by the awakening of thought and the progress of ideas. Until there be correct thought there cannot be right action; and when there is correct thought, right action will follow.

"Near the window by which I write, a great bull is tethered by a ring in his nose. Grazing round and round, he has wound the rope about the stake until he stands a close prisoner, tantalized by the rich grass he cannot reach, unable even to toss his head to rid him of the flies that cluster on his shoulders.

The bull, a very type of massive strength, who because he has not wit enough to see how he might be free, suffers want in sight of plenty, and is helplessly preyed upon by weaker creatures, seems to me to be no unfit emblem of the working masses.

But until they trace effect to cause, until they see how they are fettered and how they may be freed, their struggles and outcries are as vain as the bull. Nay they are vainer. I shall go out and drive the bull in the way that will untwist this rope. But who shall drive men into freedom?"

Adam Smith (~1723 - 1790)

Ground rents are a species of revenue which the owner, in many cases, enjoys without any care or attention of his own. Ground rents are, therefore, perhaps a species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them.

Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, Book I, p. 275): "Every improvement in the circumstances of society tends either directly or indirectly to raise the real rent of land, to increase the wealth of the landlord."

"Ground-rents, and the ordinary rent of land, are, therefore, perhaps, the species of revenue which can best bear to have a peculiar tax imposed upon them…. The annual produce of the land and labour of the society, the real wealth and revenue of the great body of the people, might be the same after such a tax as before. . . . [A tax of this kind would be] much more p